Location-dependent charging services have been investigated that apply a charge scheme of different communication fees according to the location of a portable telephone terminal at the time of communication. These services allow all or a portion of communication fees relating to communication in a specific area to be excused or enable the alteration of the charged party to an entity other than the owner of the portable telephone. Such features have enabled the promotion of portable telephone use and the activation of specific areas.
Examples of location-dependent chare control systems of the related art for realizing these services are disclosed in Patent Document 1 (JP-A-2000-287000), Patent Document 2 (JP-A-2003-174663), and Patent Document 3 (JP-A-2003-152903).
In the system described in Patent Document 1, charge rates with communication fees that differ for each area are prepared in advance, communication fees are calculated according to the location of a portable telephone terminal at the time of communication that is found by a position management device and the communication time that the portable telephone terminal was used, and the user of the portable telephone terminal is billed with these communication fees.
The system described in Patent Document 2 permits communication at fees that are cheaper than normal communication fees when a location management device recognizes that the user of a portable telephone terminal is in the vicinity of a preregistered area at the time of use of the portable telephone terminal.
The object of the system described in Patent Document 3 is to attract customers of a service business that runs a business in a specific area.
In the system described in Patent Document 3, a communication business that manages a portable telephone network determines, for each area, payment ratios (fee payment ratios) for the user of the portable telephone and the service business for paying communication fees of a portable telephone in each area based on requests of service businesses.
The communication business can then, when adjusting communication fees, proportionally bill the service businesses for all or a portion of the communication fees that would normally be billed to the user of the portable telephone according to the payment ratios that have been determined for each of these areas and a communication record that is classified by area.    Patent Document 1: JP-A-2000-287000    Patent Document 2: JP-A-2003-174663    Patent Document 3: JP-A-2003-152903